Trump told ICE agents to remove their masks in airports and exposed a GOP lie

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents wear masks, President Donald Trump and his supporters have insisted, because if they have to show their faces, then they will be doxxed. More specifically, Republicans have argued, bystanders could take photos of agents’ faces, identify them and use that information to harm them. But after dispatching ICE to 14 major U.S. airports where unpaid Transportation Security Administration workers are quitting or calling out sick, Trump said Monday on social media that “I would greatly appreciate…NO MASKS” at the airports.

That makes no sense. Set aside the fact that ICE agents don’t have the training to do what TSA agents do; if there were a legitimate threat to ICE agents who show their faces outside airports, that threat would be just as legitimate when ICE agents were inside airports.

During the ongoing shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security, Democrats have demanded reforms that include requiring ICE agents to show their faces. Trump’s social media post on Monday signaled to Democrats that talk of doxxing was always a ruse and that facial coverings for ICE officers aren’t non-negotiable, as Republicans have previously insisted.

But we always knew it was a ruse. An untold number of law enforcement officers in the U.S. go to work every day not only with their faces visible but also with their names on their chests. To argue that ICE agents are vulnerable to doxxing by showing their faces is to argue that all law enforcement officers who show their faces are. But other law enforcement officers work with their faces visible, which was an indication, long ago, that ICE officers could ditch the masks, too.

They did so at airports on Monday; their faces were clearly visible. Less clear was what the agents were doing at the airports. Photos and videos from some airports showed ICE officers walking or standing around, doing little — if anything — to relieve TSA agents.

Everett Kelley, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, had indicated in a Sunday statement that ICE couldn’t be much help, writing: “ICE agents are not trained or certified in aviation security. TSA officers spend months learning to detect explosives, weapons, and threats specifically designed to evade detection at checkpoints — skills that require specialized instruction, hands-on practice, and ongoing recertification. You cannot improvise that. Putting untrained personnel at security checkpoints does not fill a gap. It creates one.”

The apparent inability of ICE agents to do anything to speed up the long security lines at airports isn’t the only thing we’ve learned about the agency in recent days. “Trump realized ICE agents don’t need masks in airports,” Rep. James Walkinshaw, D-Va., told MS NOW’s Lawrence O’Donnell on “The Last Word” on Monday night. “If they don’t need masks in airports, then I don’t understand why they need masks when they’re wandering around communities across the country. We now know they don’t need the masks. That’s good news.”